Trump and Litmus Tests

By GENE NICHOL

I’ve tried not to think on these matters. It doesn’t work.

Donald Trump’s longest serving chief of staff, General John Kelly, has confirmed reports that the former president said: “those who defend their country in uniform, or are shot down or seriously wounded in combat, or spend years being tortured as POWs are ‘suckers’ because ‘there’s nothing in it for them.” (Deep breath.)

Kelly’s words echo earlier reports in The Atlantic that Trump said he didn’t want to visit the graves of American soldiers buried in the Aisne-Marne Cemetery near Paris. “Why should I go to that cemetery,” he asked, “it’s filled with losers.” On the same European trip, Trump said the 1,800 Marines killed in the Belleau Wood in World War I were “suckers.” Almost beyond comprehension, he uttered similarly dreadful phrases to Gold Star father Kelly at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, 2017, not far from Kelley’s son’s burial plot, saying, “I don’t get it, what was in it for them?”

The Atlantic also reported, in a profile on General Mark Milley, that Trump protested seeing severely wounded Army Captain Luis Avila sing “God Bless America” at a welcome event for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Why do you bring people like that in here,” Trump berated, “no one wants to see that, the wounded.” This was before Trump said the remarkable Milley had committed acts for which, “in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH.”

There is more, of course, including Trump’s famous statements about John McCain and George H.W. Bush. But I’ll stop before you vomit.

I listened to an interview about these outrages last week with Gold Star father Khizr Khan. He asked, “what do we expect from someone who thinks that service can only be self-service?” Trump has “no concept of living and dying for others.” He knows “nothing of sacrifice.”

Khan, whose son was a US Army captain who died in the Iraq war in 2004, went further:

“A person who has never sacrificed is incapable of love. Love of country. Love of purpose. Love of human beings. There is nothing but appetite and ego. He is incapable of leadership. Especially of being commander-in-chief.”

Kelly, who worked intensively at the former president’s side, day by day, month by month, concluded that Trump is “a person that has no idea what America stands for and no idea what America is about. [He] has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

Our Republican leaders, in Washington and Raleigh, know that what Kelly and Kahn said is true. I’m guessing most Republican voters know it too, as they prepare to re-nominate him for president. That is, I’ll concede, hard to grasp. Or forgive.

Trump’s existential, narcissistic, violence-laced threat to the American democracy is, without conceivable doubt, the most important issue faced by this state and this nation. Each of us will be called to account for our actions, in this moment, to, in Richard Rorty’s words, “‘achieve our country.”

Trump’s crusade is no doubt congenial to Proud Boys and White supremacists. But are money Republicans willing to trade all, to surrender everything, for a few thousand, or even a few million dollars? Are evangelical Tar Heels so committed to imposing their religion on everyone else that they will, literally, abandon morality, decency, and the American promise? Are libertarian Republicans, after enjoying their web of subsidies, willing to fly under this vile banner to supposedly assure they are left alone? Are each content that an ensuing totalitarian government will protect their money, their denominations, their estates, and their (already surrendered) dignities? They shouldn’t be.

Gene Nichol is Boyd Tinsley Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law and in 2015 started the North Carolina Poverty Research Fund after the UNC Board of Governors closed the state-funded Poverty Center for publishing articles critical of the governor and General Assembly.

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2023

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